How I Made 10k in Side Income

I remember vividly how I was feeling this time last year: depressed. I was coming off one of the worst freelance years since I started in 2008, and part of me wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life.

Would I have to try harder at finding a full time job? If so, what exactly would I be looking for anyway? Would I have to move from expensive Los Angeles, get a roommate, find a studio apartment, or ever be able to save ANYTHING for retirement?

Although I had started Budget and the Beach in May 2012, I still felt so behind “where I thought I should be” financially in life.

A lot of it was my fault. I had a very linear mindset as to how my career should look up until that point. If I was a video editor, then surely I just needed to find new clients or new projects to make money, right? Wrong! I mean yes, you should do that, but there were also a lot of other ventures I could be working on in the meantime.

At that point I had already started on side hustles by working for a brief moment at The Container Store (don’t recommend), and working as a personal assistant for my friend, but 2013 needed to be much bigger than that. But even still I was skeptical that one could ever make money from this thing called blogging.

I know some of you made a lot more than 10k in side hustles, and some made less. But never mind that. I’m just going to break down what I did, and if that gives some of you out there inspiration to try some of these, then this post was worth writing.

Blogging$4705

By far the biggest source of side income was making money from my blog. This includes sponsored posts, ad banners, and links in previously written articles.

What it takes: I basically had nothing happen until that magical day when Google updated its page rank, and I went from zero to four. I still don’t know exactly what I did to get a four, but I do know a few things that will help you get better rankings:

1. Write good content

2. Update your blog with new material on a consistent basis.

3. Build a community around your site, which means interacting with other bloggers in your genre, commenting, guest blogging, promoting other blogs on your site and social media, and responding to comments on your own site.

4. Learn about SEO and optimizing your site. I still have so much to learn about this, but I do know that as soon I started using SEO keywords on my site, traffic increased.

5. Create a media kit so you can easily respond to people emailing you about advertising (you can email me if you want to see mine).

Blogging is a time consuming hobby, but if you really enjoy it, which I do, why not make money from it?

Personal Assistant $1577

One thing that makes my side hustles work is that they easily work around any video freelance projects I might have.

I have the good fortune of having a friend who also works from home that often needs some extra help. This includes cleaning, chopping a lot of vegetables, organizing, and making sure he stays on task with his own work.

What it takes: A willingness to do things you may think are beneath you, like cleaning toilets (probably my least favorite of the cleaning tasks).

You can probably find assignments similar to this one on TaskRabbit and Craigslist. Be sure to negotiate terms like duties, payment, hours, etc. before you start.

Teaching Volleyball $1510

The next biggest source of side income is teaching volleyball. I have to admit I kind of fell into this by accident. One day I was substitute coaching for my friend, when a woman walked by the volleyball court with her daughter and asked if I gave lessons. Before I knew it, the word “yes” was coming out of my mouth, even though I was terrified of taking on such a task. Although I’ve been taking lessons on and off for years and achieved a decent level of success playing in recreational tournaments, teaching a kid was something that intimidated me. But everyone needs to work on the basic skills, and I had enough knowledge to teach that.

What it takes: Figure out what skills you have that you can teach. Piano, a foreign language, knitting, you name it! You need to market your skills via word of mouth, Craigslist, flyers, etc. You can also offer your services through websites like Fiverr, Elance, and TaskRabbit.

Writing $651

This is writing that I did for other websites. While my side income here was decent, this is an area I really want to grow in 2014.

What it takes: While I love to write, grammar is an area I still struggle with. Plus even though I proofread my material a gazillion times (I swear), I still miss typos. My brain just glazes over things. Don’t let this stop you from writing. I know too many talented people who get caught up in that part of things, then never write at all!

Practice makes perfect better. 🙂 Start by writing your own blog, then guest post on other blogs. Once you’ve gotten the hang of things, add a “Hire Me” page on your blog, and use social media as a way to announce that you are looking for writing gigs.

Since I still have a long way to go figuring out how to make more income in this area, I’ll leave it to more informed people to give you better advice on how to make money writing:

Selling stuff $580

I don’t think this requires much of an explanation. Everything I sold was via Craigslist. I’ve yet to utilize Ebay.

Misc. $707

This includes everything from tax refunds, Gympact rewards, found money, helping host parties, TaskRabbit, etc. It also includes cash back from various credit cards, which I use responsibly. It’s amazing how all of it adds up in a year!

Gifts/Gift Cards $500

Since I usually get money for my birthday and Christmas, I actually count this as part of my “income” each month. The reason I do this is because some months I don’t make my projected income, so everything I make goes towards the goal of making that amount. Another part of this amount is gift cards I won in various giveaways!

So that’s how I made my extra income in 2013! Stay tuned for my action plan for making extra income in 2014.

What are some of the ways you made extra income this year? Any advice I left out of this article?

Thanks Cat! I really hope so. Best wishes to you too in the coming year!

Student Debt Survivor

$10k is awesome! This year has been my first year of blogging but I’ve slowly started making a little money from sponsored posts and freelance writing. That wasn’t my original intent, but it’s been a nice little side perk. I’ve also done a bunch of pet sitting (which I love!).

Awesome job with the side income! I know I’m nowhere near $10,000, but I have been working really hard trying to earn some extra cash. So far I rely mainly on Etsy and Ebay, but I have done a few freelance design gigs for friends that paid a little bit. I’m hoping 2014 will be better and I’ll be able to boost site traffic and start to monetize.

Congrats on all the side income, that is great! Thanks for the tips. PR just updated and mine is 2 🙁 I am going to work on that, although I thought I was doing ok. I also want to break out into freelance writing, get more brand ambassador gigs, and learn more things about blogging, languages, and more. I want to focus on happiness and balance too.

Nice work Tonya! I like to look at how much I made in side-hustles from the past year as well. I look at that income differently because it’s money that I’ve had to essentially “find” myself. My side income has gone up each of the last several years and I don’t see any sign of it stopping. Hope the same goes for you as well! 🙂

That’s awesome Travis! I hope mine continues to get better too! What sort of ways are you making side income?

Travis Pizel

I do Mystery Shopping picking up a couple of shops each month, but by far the most “side income” comes from my second career as a freelance writer as well as managing a few social media profiles.

AvgJoeMoney

Great year. I can’t imagine what your goals are for 2014, but I’ll bet they’re high. I’m in transition with my side incomes. I’ve decided that I’m not really interested in banner or Google Adsense advertising anymore. In 2014 I’ll be switching income streams….it’ll either be a boon or I’ll fall flat on my face. Either way, it’ll be spectacular, I’m sure.

My biggest obstacle of doing anything freelance is the taxes. I know you have a good system in place for your main freelance work and claiming taxes on it.

Are you claiming taxes on the blog, PA, and volleyball income?

For something like the PA, if you do claim taxes, you’re left with about $900 made from that. Do you still feel that’s worth it for the amount of time you put into it? (Honest question, I don’t know how much ‘effort’ it takes)

$10k is pretty good for a side hustle. I sold some books on Amazon which I got for free (apparently someone moving out in my apartment decided to just dump them in the trash room…got like $200 so far and have one more book!). I definitely want to increase…actually I’d like to have any kind of blogging income. I’ll need to learn some SEO as well as how to monetize.

Congratulations, Tonya! What a success story here. I’ve yet to transition my blog into making money and while I wouldn’t complain if I did, I just enjoy having my very own creative space for the time being. A question: How did you manage keeping an updated site, networking with other bloggers, and building relationships with advertisers? In other words, how did you find the time!?! That seems to be my biggest hiccup.

Thanks Candice! I sometimes wake up at 5:30 in the morning to start and I try to cut myself off by 8 or 9pm, but in that time I’m juggling all those things. And I often work a lot on the weekend on my blog, which to me is enjoyable so it doesn’t feel like a lot of work. But the truth is I don’t have much of a social life, which, with my budget, is kind of helpful anyway. 🙂 BTW I JUST bought a Neti pot today. Hoping it helps.

That’s awesome Tonya! I’m very impressed, especially with how much you’ve been able to earn from the blog. As a newbie myself, my wife and I are working tirelessly on the blog and generating good content, so thank you for being an inspiration and showing it can be done. We also began selling things on eBay, since we have a spare bedroom, we have no overhead costs other than what we spend on the item we’re selling. We usually hit goodwill and garage sales to see if we can find any good deals to turn a profit on. Keep up the seriously baller work- it is already paying off for our!

Thank you Ryan! Good luck with all your blog efforts too. I know it can be very time consuming but I absolutely LOVE it!

E.M.

Congrats! I definitely think this post was worth you writing =). I am always inspired by others who find ways to make extra income. When we move, I really hope to find some things I can sell. That seems to be one of the easier ways to go about it.

I wanted to sell a couple more things in December but I’m swamped with video work right now. It’s amazing though that whenever I think I can’t find anything else to sell…I do.

Micros Missions

That is awesome, congrats. I really haven’t made anything with the blog so far (losing money once server costs are considered) but it’s still young and I’m not in a rush. I have been able to generate a little bit of side income through churning credit cards and a focus group. It’s not a whole lot but I think I’ve made/saved between $500 – $700 this year.

Tonya, this is so awesome! I always get encouraged reading about other people’s side hustle success stories. $10k is such a great number. I haven’t calculated my take for 2013 yet, but I think it will be at 10k or slightly below (honestly haven’t looked too closely yet, for better or for worse). I think hitting a benchmark like $10k is motivating as well because if you can make $10k why not $20k? Why not $50k? etc.

To answer your question, I blog and did some spreadsheet “consulting” though I haven’t pursued it since blogging takes 110% of my free time now.

Oh yeah I know how much time it takes! I think that’s one of my goals for next year is to not spend a lot of extra time making side income but trying to focus on ways to make passive income. Now wouldn’t that be nice? 🙂

Daniel

Wow, you did an awesome job and thanks for breaking down how you made it to $10,000. Do you think any of your tasks were not worth it?

Thanks Daniel. Hmmm, I think taskrabbit was something I used the year prior more but because the market became saturated here in LA, people were giving people rides that were 50 miles away for 10 bucks because people kept getting underbid by people who were desperate. So I kind of stopped using them as much because the trouble of the task wasn’t worth the payment.

Holly Johnson

Winning! You did an awesome job this year! I know you can find more writing jobs…they are definitely out there.

Yeah I had another one lined up but she decided to shut down her blog. Back to more searching.

John S @ Frugal Rules

Awesome work Tonya! Like others have said, I love the diversity of how you’re bringing in side hustle money which is huge. My main side hustle income was through the blogging and starting to get a couple of corporate blogging opportunities thanks to the business. I’m still in the middle of figuring out my year…I made the mistake of not keeping good track of everything – NOT a mistake I’m going to make in 2014.

way to go Tonya! That is awesome! The first year I started “the side hustle” I made like $400 or something like that. Then it was $10,000 and this year I broke $20,000. SO you never know where it will leave you! I will say that I am probably going to be cutting back next year. But it is so hard to let go of earning money!

DAMN!! $10,000 in side hustle $$ is no joke! I am super proud of you and I love it when everyone shares this type of information. It’s very informative and encouraging to people who are getting started on their side hustle journey. I also enjoyed seeing the variety of ways you made money. As for the toilet cleaning-you already read my post on Super Poo awhile back. Nothing more needs to be said 🙂

Thanks for sharing Tonya, This will provide much inspiration for folks who were feeling like you were feeling last December. I also love that you took a chance and said “yes” to doing some personal volleyball lessons. Sometimes taking that big leap of faith will lead to some pretty cool opportunities! Have a great weekend!

Congrats on all the side income! Isn’t it wild how much people are willing to pay you for blog spots just because you have a PR4? It’s also a little dumb when that PR goes down (for the same unknown reasons why it went up) and all those deals go away – even though you still put out great content and achieve great traffic every day. Now you just have to focus on having the same success with your other sites so that you can mulitply your earnings.

Congratulations, Tonya! This is a huge inspiration. What’s wonderful is that you are not afraid to take on multiple tasks to enhance your side income. It sounds like you are incredibly talented! I just started a side hustle a couple months ago with my 8-5 job, and I know there are a vast amount of things to continue to learn. Thanks for being someone to look up to — I know that this post was made in 2013, but I could only imagine how far you have come and that 2015 will be an amazing year for you.

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